When your comfort zone becomes your coffin, it’s your ego taking control of life. Don’t let yourself do it to yourself, or at least don’t waste twenty years, or your life, trying to prove otherwise.
Ego is not necessarily bad; it’s simply the part of you that holds onto a version of your self-esteem or self-importance. For me, it’s the part of me that refuses to believe that I fell for the scam too. In that way, it paves the way for self-destruction in this relationship.
I’ve spent twenty years waiting for something to happen that was never going to happen. I was just another in a long line of women baited with charm, hooked on potential, and caged by their ego, trying to prove, no, not me too.
I went in thinking that I was smarter. Luckily, I am smart enough to add up the stakes, and realize it’s time to cut bait. Where did the charm go, I wondered. I never wanted to be a mother, yet here I am doing all the cooking, cleaning, and caring. After twenty years, that child should be moving out.
I wanted to be a house decorator and home renovator, and that’s the potential that was dangled in my face. I almost fell for it, except that I knew that I’d have no legal recourse to claim my money back in the face of something going wrong. So, you only spend what you can afford to waste, like you do when you gamble.
A Gradual Awakening
It’s a good scam to ask someone to move in and wait until they get so frustrated with something that they fix it themselves on their own dime. I know someone who is renting and acting like the owner as they invest their time and money, and I also know the landlord has no intention of ever selling.
I’m that renter, and I’ve spent over twenty grand on things that I can’t take with me when I go.
A year ago I asked for legal paperwork to protect my interests. In the real world, people get married, and their interests are equally protected by that legal arrangement, though they often lose much of the value of what they build to the lawyers in arguing over the equality of it all.
I don’t have that arrangement. It was years ago when I was told it would not be on the table. I cried, then convinced myself I didn’t need it and kept on carrying on.
Over the years, I got over a lot of things I thought I needed. Some might say I’ve lowered my standards, but I prefer to see the strength and skills I’ve developed. Making peace with reality by way of denial.
One day, it becomes undeniable. The year went by without even an appointment.
Waking up takes time – two weeks to get the time with my financial advisor. Two weeks to get pre-approved for a mortgage. Two weeks to find a house that I can imagine living in.
Only a few hours to get my offer accepted.
Undeniable Truths
Two weeks is suddenly a long time to wait when I’ve been waiting twenty years for the renovation and decoration to begin. To begin. Most people have built complete homes from scratch, sold them, and built again in that time frame.
To hear that I had the patience of a dead man from someone who should barely know me woke me up to reality. It has nothing to do with me – it never did.
During the pandemic, I thought I should have someone to bring me water when I was sick in bed. I was wrong. “I guess I have to make my own breakfast,” he said.
There were many things I got wrong. About how easy it would all be. About who owned what. And about who was what, because when they are scary to you and a wet noodle to everyone else, that’s abuse.
Just because you think you can vent on someone who loves you enough to forgive you, doesn’t mean you get to make a habit of it, and creating a trait out of it means that’s how you are known by those who know you over the years.
When I first moved in, his mother bought me a hammock stand for my birthday. “I saw you had one, and if you are waiting for him to help you hang it, you will die waiting,” she laughed.
Looking back, I wish I had taken note of all the red flags instead of letting my ego refuse to admit that mistakes were being made – by me.
Unavoidable Traps
As I pack up my stuff, I realize how much of it is my stuff.
Back in the beginning, I remember many home essentials missing. I started to bring over my own. Over time, they remained. One weekend, a guest asked if they could go buy a frypan so they could have breakfast. I remember replacing that frypan when it wore out.
I’m such a sucker, while convincing myself that I could afford it.
I kept throwing good money after bad, more good years after bad ones, thinking that yes, I am smarter, I am watching out for my legal and financial interests. In reality, I was better at calculating, justifying, and resisting.
Many years ago, I submitted photos of the bathroom and won “ugliest bathroom in Canada.” Two years ago, I was granted permission to rip that bathroom out. When it became clear that my tastes and preferences didn’t matter, I said, “If it has to be your way, you do it.” Since then, nothing has happened.
“With what time?” he asks. Too bad that he’s not a reader, for Simple Streamlining could help him out.
What’s obvious is where all the time goes. His dad says, “He can spend all day in that parking lot talking to everyone.”
He says, “Everyone wants to talk to me. What am I supposed to do?”
Leave the politics at home, stay out of the gossip, and focus on getting your work done.
Your ego wants to believe that you are popular and the hub of local conversations. I’ve witnessed people about to leave, only to hear him fire up another round of discussion.
King procrastinator by way of the spoken word, if you ask me.
Attainable Delights
I can tolerate an ugly bathroom and afford to hire help to fix it. From visiting hotels, I know that it is a delight to have fresh, bright, and clean rooms and the ability to keep them that way. I’m going “to help myself to happiness,” as I was once advised to do.
Last time, when I packed my stuff, I left some things behind, hoping it was more of a pause than a break. This time, I will leave nothing behind, and the next girl will say, the same as I, “It looks like she took everything.”
And he will laugh, as he did then, and find the first opportunity to call me a name. He’ll spin the truth as he wants it, and it will be an entirely new, “Game on.” I wonder how long it will take her to figure it out. I’ll bet she’s quicker than me.
Yep, no different than all the others, but I might be the first who can afford to buy her own home and get a move on.
I might not have much time left. Five months ago, my skin erupted, and I looked to Google for a diagnosis. “It’s no joke. Contact your doctor immediately,” was the advice I found.
Yet, I don’t have a doctor, so what’s a girl to do? Get the hospital? Lol, have you read about them in the news? People are dying waiting. I’m on a waiting list for a doctor – 3 to 5 years. Do I have that long?
Hopefully, I am merely being dramatic. Without a doctor, how would one know?
A Timely Conversation
This week marks the start of hunting season. For the first time in years, we will have time to talk as it will only be he and I staying overnight at the hunting camp.
It’s impossible to have private conversations with other people around, and there’s always been other people around. First, there was Bob.
We started out camping. After a few fun trips, I said, “Next time, you can do all the cooking.”
Next time, I met Bob. “Bob’s your uncle,” he laughed.
Bob said, “I love to cook. What would you like for breakfast?” I didn’t have to do any cooking, but it also meant certain conversations were now off the table.
Suddenly, no matter where we went or what we did, there were other people. People who seemed to be there simply to prevent certain conversations being had.
At work, I was promoted, and suddenly, my work-from-home job became no more. A decision needed to be made. Without a conversation, I knew I was alone doing it. Just like that, I picked my career over my relationship – the more secure bet, and started packing.
Within weeks after the move, I blew up at my boss who wanted me to thank her for my promotion. “Thank you? You ruined my life! For a job throwing parties? I’ve never thrown one in my life!”
Shortly thereafter, I was laid off because, as the HR guy said, “We like people to be happy here.”
I should have walked away then, but I rationalized that he didn’t want yet another person relying on him for their livelihood, and there was no way I’d swap my salary for that of a cashier without some kind of concession.
Like a ring, and an oath, and a future.
Hasty Ultimatums
I swore I wasn’t going to be the kind of girl who demands a marriage contract. My older sister issued an ultimatum to her boyfriend, and he did what she wanted, and then proceeded to cheat on her before any oaths were made.
It never seems to work out. Free will is meant to be respected.
Yet there I was yesterday, saying to my boyfriend that on this morning, I am either putting down my deposit and going forward with my home inspection, or he is going to upgrade this relationship.
“You have 24 hours to decide,” I said.
With two very different possible futures, how could it be that I was letting someone else make the decision for me? That’s something I’ve simply never done, but the ego simply will not give up.
In Resilience Now, I suggest altering your ego to make it easier to act out the behaviours of the person you want to be, so you can grow into that way of behaving more easily or automatically. I know it works, because I did it myself.
Not too long after I moved back, I was going for a long walk to break in my hunting boots and test the comfort factor. Since you can’t go anywhere here without going on a highway (in the winter), I donned my hunter orange pants to help cars notice me, though I was always sure to be far out of their way by the time we were beside each other.
Personal Definitions
One day, a Jeep pulled over, and the window rolled down. Someone yelled, “Hi.” I headed closer, thinking they might want directions.
When I got to the window, there was a man in the driver’s seat introducing me to his dog, who was in the passenger seat.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I responded not with my name, but my relationship to a local. I’m a girlfriend.
“He has a girlfriend? We always thought he was gay!”
We both laughed. For me, it was simply absurd; that guy recognized talent in the department of keeping someone hidden.
At home, I realized that the dog could have been vicious, the guy not so nice, and what could have happened.
As for where it happened, there was not another soul in sight. I was down a shortcut road at a location with no structures or people in sight.
Gone without a sight, a witness, or any trace.
I told my boyfriend the story and now we call it Creepy Man Road.
The ego is how you define yourself, and being helpful is how I want to define myself – not timid, not streetsmart, not wary. That said, I did what I did on alert, knowing I would recognize the moment I would need to scream, run, or start kicking. When they made jokes at my expense at being called a Black Belt, yet far from physical competent to protect myself, I enrolled in kickboxing. I only quit taking lessons when I moved to a town where they weren’t something you could do.
I’ve always disliked my first name, to the point I avoided using it. Estranged from my family, my last name isn’t an attachment I want.
I also realized that I didn’t want to exist through a definition to someone else.
Clarifying Standards
I’m my own person, but I’m not always doing things for me. Like Laura Linney’s character who is facing a terminal diagnosis and wants back the time she spent closing cupboard doors and picking up clothes, at times, I have to ask myself if I’m trying to raise someone else to my standards, and what might happen if I lowered them.
If you are filling a gap, why? When you own why you are doing it, the resentment doesn’t have to build into anger. Or, you stop doing it without ever thinking twice about it again.
My boyfriend’s mother told me a time when she asked her husband to carry something for her. He asked her to leave it right there, and he’d get to it. “I waited two hours!” And then she did it.
Just like that, she trained everyone around her to wait for her to do it. Of course, she doesn’t see it like that, but how is the way you view your world done in your best interests instead of the way others might?
Other times, consider raising them. I bought a rototiller to improve my gardens and start others. My fairy godfather said, “You’re my hero.” My boyfriend said to one of his customers, so I heard later, “Watch this, she can barely hold on to the thing.”
I’m no weakling. I like to define myself by the Ox, as the year in Chinese when I was born – I can bear a load, and more, the more power I have, the better. I think of power as strength through a range of motion. To that end, I split about 30 cords of wood a year.
A Self-Determined Life
Am I bragging or complaining? Either way, it’s the ego at work.
It’s complaining when you might think that 30 cord is an outrageous number.
Is it too high because insulation and home renovations could lower that number? Or is it outrageous because it’s for a cookstove, a woodstove and a campstove? Or does it not matter because it’s the product of clearing wood at the camp for my field of dreams and the wood has to be processed or wasted?
I’d mentioned that I wanted to get a Chevy Colorado in the spring. My fairy godfather asked why. I described my plans to take my rototiller to the hunting camp and plant alfalfa. He thought for maybe a second before offering to buy the attachment for his tractor and take it to an ideal plot of land where his family had a farm a few generations back. And so, the clearing began.
How ideal, I brag, my wild dreams still coming true. If how you define yourself isn’t serving you, you might need a new idea and a new name. I’d invite you to check out Authenticity, Innovation, and What Could Be.
As an engineer, I can’t leave well enough alone. When I add up precious time and opportunity lost to the chore of taking bales of alfalfa around to various locations at the hunting camp, I start wondering why we don’t just plant a field of the stuff, even one at each one of these locations.
We could be far more sneaky, far more abundant, and far more efficient if hunting is the point, and to that end, I’ll never stop seeing ways to continue to improve. It’s simply what I’m made of, and that’s neither bragging nor complaining.
A Conscious Effort
Who will I be? It’s up to the adult self to decide and to make a conscious effort not to be clear about how we want to show up in life, what energy we want to spread, and how we want to affect others.
The future is up to me. It always has been and always will be. Far less of life is as random or out of your hands as you might think. As I await the answer to my ultimatum, I know I haven’t let someone else make my decisions for me, if it completely looks that way on the outside.
No matter which direction, it’s forward I go.
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